The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars

Even though I think I have, at multiple points, claimed I would take a break from Greg Bear stories, I went back on that again. In part, that was because Legacy was good enough to put me at ease after being underwhelmed by the other books I tried. But mostly this happened because I was at the Kent Library and I was in a hurry, so I grabbed Anvil of Stars. Even if it turned out to be worse than anything else of his I'd ever read, it would still be tolerable...

Well, one of the first things I saw when I started reading was something along the lines of "This book is a sequel to The Forge of God. In that book, robots attack Earth and when the book ends, they blow Earth up. Spoiler alert!"

The preferred path would be to read The Forge of God first, but it was too late for that. But once I was done with Anvil of Stars, I did immediately start reading The Forge of God, that is...

...once I finished A Clash of Kings. And that's another topic altogether. Suffice to say, I've failed to follow through on my policy (that I never enforced even for a moment) of only reading books by authors that are dead, but that I am now considering a new policy of only getting my books by putting them on hold first, rather than checking books out by browsing the fiction stacks. Yeah, that'd require me to plan ahead, which seems unlikely.

Anyway, I do recommend both of these. Anvil of Stars uses some of the same techniques for describing characters interacting with super-futuristic technologies that Greg Bear uses in Hull Zero Three, but for Anvil of Stars it actually works. In the science fiction subgenre of "aliens invade Earth" The Forge of God is probably the best I've ever seen. It does leave some questions unanswered until Anvil of the Stars and of course, the sequel raises even more questions. Although The Forge of God is a good book in its own right, it's also definitely setup for Anvil of Stars, which really tells the more fascinating story, although the characters are slightly less well-developed.

Either of these novels could almost act as standalones (accepting the cheesy note at the beginning of Anvil of Stars explaining that Earth was destroyed and the events that took place as that was happening). They have their own plots with their own resolutions. Only one character appears in both. Still, I consider this a two-volume work, rather than two separate books by the same author. Not that this matters much, since I haven't updated my stupid list in years. It's so out-of-date I don't think I've even mentioned it here. You'd have to go to LiveJournal for that! And yeah, don't. Or do. Whatever, I won't stop you. Do whatever you want. You're an adult.